Chapter 38 Part 2

Meng Ning wasn’t sure if she felt disappointed or relieved. On second thought, she secretly felt a sense of safety—after all, compared to Wen Zenian’s easy openness, she was the one who least wanted to revisit those teenage years.

She asked Wen Zenian, “Did you go out to wash up and put on makeup by yourself?”

Wen Zenian nodded.

Meng Ning found that strange. “Aren’t you afraid of running into Qi Xiao or Song Xiao?”

Wen Zenian glanced at her. “I got up at four. I’m hardly likely to bump into them.”

Meng Ning: …

You could never imagine the lengths a woman would go to just to keep anyone from seeing her bare-faced.

Meng Ning got out of bed. “I’m going to wash up. My day off happens to fall on the weekend this time, and Song Xiao’s off too. We usually wait for her and Qi Xiao to get up before having breakfast together. Are you hungry?”

With her makeup on, Wen Zenian naturally regained her air of pride. “No.”

The morning after a night of drinking, no one was ever truly hungry.

Wen Zenian continued handling her work. By the time Meng Ning finished washing up and returned, she was nearly done as well.

Meng Ning asked, “Should I open the window?”

“Sure.”

Meng Ning loved opening the windows in this old apartment, especially in the morning, greedily inhaling the everyday scents of life drifting in from the street. She pulled back the curtains now and flung the window wide, then leaned back against the wall beside it with her hands clasped behind her, peering out.

Wen Zenian watched Meng Ning.

Meng Ning’s features hadn’t changed much from before. It was more her face shape, or perhaps her eyes, that signaled how the girl from back then had become a mature woman. She never wore makeup, Wen Zenian thought. Only someone who’d been pretty since childhood could be this lax about her looks—splashing her face with water and calling it done.

Even the droplets on her face weren’t fully wiped away. A bit of moisture clung to her clear jawline, and her eyebrows were lively, twisted into damp little twists.

Wen Zenian followed her gaze outside. Meng Ning was probably looking at a faint wisp of cloud on the horizon. Down below, vendors in the market hawked their chickens amid rooster crows, the bun shop called out its wares, and passersby exchanged greetings in thick local dialect. Meng Ning paid no attention to any of it. She simply let the sounds filter into her ears, immersing her whole being in the hustle and bustle of ordinary life.

A strange thought occurred to Wen Zenian: If it weren’t for this, Meng Ning might just float away, light as air.

Meng Ning noticed her stare and turned back with a smile. “Doesn’t it feel weird to you?”

“What?”

“You, right now, sitting in an old building right next to a vegetable market.” Meng Ning grinned wider. “Don’t get me wrong—even I find it pretty strange.”

The glaring morning sun dulled the senses, and Wen Zenian spoke without thinking. “But when I was a teenager, this was the best future I could imagine.”

The words hung in the air, and Meng Ning froze.

Wen Zenian paused, then smiled to explain. “Still alive, with a little place to call my own, a market nearby so I wouldn’t have to worry about the next meal.”

A smile returned to Meng Ning’s face. “You don’t need to think that way anymore.”

Wen Zenian looked at her steadily. “No, I don’t.”

Just then, Meng Ning heard noises from outside the room. “Sounds like Qi Xiao and the others are up. I’ll go ask what they’re making for breakfast.”

A moment later, she poked her head back in. “No one’s hungry. We’ve decided to hit the market and buy some ingredients to cook. You—” Her fingers on the door curled slightly before she continued, “want to stay for lunch?”

Wen Zenian couldn’t quite read that tiny gesture. “Is this a polite dismissal, or do you want me to stay?”

She guessed in her mind that Meng Ning would say: “That depends on your work schedule.”

Sure enough, Meng Ning replied, “That depends on your own plans.”

Wen Zenian curved her lips in a smile. A subtle difference in wording, but she’d passed the test.

But then Meng Ning stepped inside, closed the door behind her, and leaned back against it. “Though if you ask me, if your work allows it, I’d like you to stay.”

Wen Zenian stood and walked over to the door, gently rubbing Meng Ning’s earlobe. She wasn’t blind to the shift in Meng Ning’s attitude. Meng Ning was like a feral cat—get too clingy, and she’d vanish without a trace. Only once she was certain she wouldn’t be trapped would she creep closer and give you a tentative scratch.

Even if that realization added a touch of bitterness to her heart, the closeness that had started last night made her push her luck a little. “And if my work doesn’t allow it?”

Wearing slippers, she was about the same height as Meng Ning, their eyes level. She looked right into Meng Ning’s clear black-and-white gaze. Meng Ning lowered her lashes, and even that brief silence felt feather-light, yet it sent a thump through Wen Zenian’s heartbeat.

Only then did Meng Ning lift her eyes. For once, she wasn’t smiling. In a very soft voice, she said, “I’d still like you to stay.”

Wen Zenian tried to keep her tone casual and light. “All right.”

Spring had arrived, and the daytime temperatures rose quickly. Meng Ning pulled out a plaid shirt and light-colored jeans, planning to change and head downstairs to the market with Qi Xiao and Song Xiao.

Wen Zenian, on the one hand, had more work to handle; on the other, she knew her presence would make things awkward. So she scrapped the idea entirely.

She made a request of Meng Ning. “Get me a cup of coffee.”

“What kind?”

“You guess.”

“If I guess wrong, won’t you miss out on the coffee you actually want?”

Wen Zenian shrugged. “Life is like a game of cards.”

Meng Ning smiled and left the room to join Qi Xiao and the others downstairs.

Getting along with Wen Zenian now was actually easier than she’d imagined. Once you’d reached a certain level of success in life, past pains mostly turned into mere stories, and life’s little frustrations were easily brushed aside.

Meng Ning might fall into a long silence over some minor detail that didn’t go as planned, but Wen Zenian never did. She was always in complete control, always calm and collected.

The old city had its charms. The produce in the market was all fresh and vibrant. Song Xiao asked Meng Ning, “Some home-cooked dishes—think Gwyneth can handle them?”

Qi Xiao was even more certain than Meng Ning. “She’ll love it. It’s like how we get sick of the staff meals at five-star hotels and crave street food instead. Gwyneth eats gourmet every day, so home cooking is a novelty for her. Think about it—she’s been jet-setting since she started working, always in hotels, never even had a place of her own.”

Qi Xiao said this just as Meng Ning was picking out a king oyster mushroom from a stall. Her fingers paused.

The vendor took it for pickiness. “These mushrooms are fresh, nice and thick.”

Meng Ning smiled and put the mushroom in her little bag, handing it over. “Weigh it up, please.”

The sun was perfect, the market bustling. Meng Ning didn’t think of herself as the artistic type, yet here she was in this lively, everyday place, feeling Qi Xiao’s simple words stab right at her heart.

Qi Xiao had said of Wen Zenian—”never even had a place of her own.”

When Meng Ning had first met teenage Wen Zenian, she’d indeed been someone without a real home. Orphaned by her parents’ car crash at birth, passed between two uncles’ families and then her grandparents’, never settling anywhere—just drifting.

Now Wen Zenian seemed to have it all, and yet she still had no home of her own.

She was like a bird without feet, her wings so beautiful in flight that as she migrated from one end of the world to the other, people forgot to wonder:

Did she not want to land, or was she afraid to?

Leaving the market, Meng Ning pointed to a roadside café. “I’ll grab her that coffee. What do you two want?”

Song Xiao sighed. “I rely on coffee to get through workdays. Let me rest on the weekend.”

Qi Xiao passed too, but grinned at Meng Ning with a wink. “Oh ho, her.” She drew out the last word in a teasing lilt.

Meng Ning shot her a sideways glance. “You do that every time you talk about her too—’she this, she that.'”

“Mine’s to avoid suspicion. Even sitting in the corner of the staff cafeteria, whispering, it’s still risky if someone overhears.” Qi Xiao waggled her eyebrows. “But when you say it, your tone’s different. Oh ho, her—no name needed.”

It was only since confirming that Meng Ning was perfectly clear-headed about Wen Zenian that she’d dared to tease so freely.

Meng Ning ignored her and headed into the café.

Truth be told, she wouldn’t get the coffee wrong.

She remembered the first time Wen Zenian had come to her place—it had been from this very shop.

Like someone with a photographic memory, Meng Ning inexplicably recalled every detail of that day with crystal clarity, endlessly dissecting and magnifying them in her mind. She remembered the lightly dancing dust motes in the morning sun, how Wen Zenian’s hair turned a soft gold in that light, the creases in her slacks as she leaned against the counter, the way her thin lips tugged downward slightly when she ordered an espresso.

Her voice was so beautiful, like a nighttime dream spilling into daylight.

Meng Ning placed the order with the barista: “One espresso.”

She stepped out with the paper cup, the old district’s unique backdrop behind her—the crowded market hiding a few tiny cafés and handmade silver shops, fruit stands topped with red-white-and-blue striped awnings, the old bakery ignoring health trends around low-fat options, its first batch of bread filling the air with rich, buttery aroma.

On the walk home, she’d pass right under her bedroom window. Meng Ning held the coffee in one hand and the produce in the other, and for some reason, she glanced up.

A gentle morning breeze stirred, and she could see a corner of the drab gray curtain in the bedroom. But the figure standing by the window seemed pulled straight from a classical oil painting into this scene.

Wen Zenian wasn’t one for smiling much. But seeing Meng Ning look up, she gave a small wave.

Her usual restrained gesture—just the fingertips fluttering slightly, as if reluctant to bestow more beauty on the world.

Wen Zenian had probably grown tired from work, so she’d come to the window to gaze out. The mug in her hand was Meng Ning’s, simple yellow-and-blue stripes that looked infused with hidden magic in her pale fingers.

The casual T-shirt she wore was Meng Ning’s too, the neckline a bit loose. Meng Ning used lemon-scented detergent, so that soft, thin collar should carry a faint citrus fragrance.

Meng Ning halted in her tracks.

Only then did Qi Xiao and Song Xiao, chatting away, notice she was staring up.

Wen Zenian smiled. In the soft morning light, in the first breeze of spring, against the noisy backdrop of fishmongers and chicken sellers behind her, the woman at the fourth-floor bedroom window smiled with perfect serenity. Her lightly parted lips seemed to murmur either “Meng Ning” or “Morning.”

Qi Xiao’s words from earlier echoed in Meng Ning’s ears. She’d said of Wen Zenian—”never even had a place of her own.”

In that moment, an unprecedented longing stirred in Meng Ning’s heart:

She hoped the coffee Wen Zenian wanted this morning really was an espresso.

She didn’t want to get it wrong.